Wednesday's Words on a Friday

 

The original Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and eventually taken over by a moveable feast of participants when Delores had computer troubles. Sadly, Delores has now closed her blog forever due to other problems.

The aim of the words is to encourage us to write. A story, a poem, whatever comes to mind.

If you are posting an entry on your own blog, please let us know so we can come along to read it and add a few encouraging words.

This month the words/prompts are supplied by David M. Gascoigne and can be found here

This week's words/prompts are: 

1.elbows  2.imagine  3.canal  4.heavily  5.population  

and/or: 

1.mocked  2.months  3.annex  4.support  5.casino

here is my story:  (a bit rushed, but I think it's okay)

For months they mocked me and the months became years as I built a solid annex to my home, then attached it to a flood-proof, cyclone-proof, fire-proof survival cellar burrowed into the hill behind my house.

“Yer’ crazy Dave,” they said, “completely bonkers,” they said. “We don’t get that kind of weather here,” they said. But I’d been a meteorologist in my younger years and I could see the climate changes coming.

Over time, places that once were heavily inundated with annual rains became drier and a few of the town’s small population began to think differently. They even gave some support against the hecklers.

As the local canal waters dropped lower and lower, even Colin Chuckberry, the Casino owner, expressed some concern. He asked if he could view the interior of my cellar, saying he might want to build one himself in the concrete carpark under the Casino. "Bit late for that mate," I thought to myself, but didn't say so out loud.

I showed him what I had done so far, even showing off shelves groaning with survival supplies. “I imagine you’d be set for quite some time,” he said, noting the canned goods, water barrels and stacks of toilet paper. ‘Where’s yer toilet?” he asked, and I showed him a composting toilet in a little hollow off to one side.

What I didn’t show him, nor anyone else, was the much larger room behind the cellar, with even more supplies and a ventilation system. The whole shebang had taken me twenty years or thereabouts and still wasn’t quite ready.

But I was out of time. Within a week a spectacular storm hit the town, no one knew where it came from or how long it would last, but suddenly two hundred and fifty families were touching elbows crowded into my cellar, crying in fear and wondering how they would survive as the winds blew away roofs and sheds, as the canal rose and flooded much of what was left.

My own home was almost as safe as the cellar and I moved a few families with smaller children into it. There was no power of course, so I instructed them to eat the frozen pre-cooked foods before using anything else.